


Clueless context

by Anonymous



Series: In Context [1]
Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: No Smut, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 21:31:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20731073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The Constant is cruel, but survivable.





	Clueless context

Living alone hadn't been too bad, really. Every few weeks he'd hike down to town, buy what little he could afford, and then hike back, hissing the air in between his teeth and avoiding the stares of the townspeople, odd looks to his frazzled hair, the hollowness of his eyes, bloodshot, heavy eyebags, how short in stature and rough in face he was. They were polite enough to not hiss back, and if any did take to staring, it was just the kids; the young, inexperienced, watching him wide eyed and fluttering in the air, trying to oh so subtly scent him, to check him off on their own set of labels, figure his place on the scale of danger or not.

They needn't worry, as their parents narrowed their eyes, ignored him in the most politest of ways. Lower level betas were not something to take home and talk about, after all.

Funny, how he didn't even want to think of himself as that word, that _label_. Then again, Wilson never had much of a care for the structure of society, for how the "normal" way of life went. His parents hadn't put much thought into him after all; his siblings, of higher caste standing, meant more to them. Even if it had only been the three of them, two alphas in the family meant less attention to himself, middle child and all. 

Well, he sure hoped they were fucking happy with what they got. One dead to a damn war, the other crippled, and him missing for far longer than they ever cared to search. Serves them right, he supposed; that way of thinking was outdated, even when he had been a clueless child.

Out on his own, no one to make snide remarks, no one to bother him, get in his space, try to push him around, it was _freedom_ at its finest. He could do what he wanted, and all he had to care about was to make sure he had food for himself, easily taken care of by the obligated payments his family still sent. Good on them for at least pretending.

And, of course, his cycles were not that heavy. A bit rough, alone and pacing, pacing, hissing faint frustration as that imbalanced cocktail mix of hormones flooded through him, but he was a scientist, he wasn't going to take it as it was! Experimenting was a distraction in of itself, and while he certainly couldn't achieve something so close as blockers or supplements or even "cure alls", he certainly achieved muting out the far worse affects, numbing himself even. And, there was the fact that he figured out some good new cleaning agents; made sure his home didn't stink to high heaven after each cycle, and that made him at least feel accomplished afterwards. 

He'd not say he was lonely; science kept him company, he'd fight for that, and no matter the imbalances of his biology he could always _always_ return to science, for answers, for comfort, for distraction. It may not satisfy those primal urges, but it sure as hell took his mind off the mess that his body caused. 

Living in the Constant, however, was a bit more different. Living in the Constant alone, very at odds with his previous living situation.

He used logic to find his answers, as best as he could, and his understandings, late at night as he pressed his palms to his eyes and tried to ignore the slither shadows outside of the firelight, his knowledge of it went something like this:

Reduced to the struggle of survival, it was just backpedaling. 

Reduced to fighting to live each day, hunting viciously, scavenging for every bite, attacking every threat, it shoved all that low key domestication out the window.

No more days of leisure, no more lazing about contently, no more wasting time to do what he _wanted_. It was all about _need_, now, and if he tried otherwise he was dead.

Death, funny enough, wasn't the be all end all either. Barely even a reprieve, at most, and then he was right back into the fray. A bit of a reset, at the very least, but not by much.

Voices through radios carried no scent, no information. They were only sound, only words, and so long alone without interaction had made him far too gullible, too trusting. He had wanted a miracle, a science made magic, all created by his genius, and that was what he latched onto when suckered into the deal. The words spoken to him were promises and knowledge far beyond his dreams, and Wilson had eaten them up without a second thought. 

Would knowing _who_ was on the other end have changed his mind? Probably not.

Especially since his first meeting, finally his first face to face meeting, was a foreign sky scentless one. 

The Constants sun blazed pale overhead, there was a dark shadow cast above him, the shine of eyes and too many sharp teeth and heady, thick tobacco smoke, sweetened deep words mocking him, "Better get something to eat before night comes calling, pal", and little else. Not enough to build any lasting, impactful relations.

But enough to stir an emotional anger. He's never been duped before, his trust smashed and dreams ruined, kidnapped and thrown into torture and suffering, and whenever he heard that snide little voice, hissing sharp and mocking, sometimes at the edges of his camp, sometines overlooking as he bled to death, gasping and choking in pain, or blinking slowly awake after the fog of being recently deceased, all he felt whirl in him was an angry barking reaction, hateful and frustrated and suffocating under the feeling of hopelessness. This cursed world was a hell all by itself, worse than any religious upbringing could have instilled in him via early childhood, and his anger frothed and he fought tooth and nail to survive each and every day, a hated face in his mind and very little else.

The Constant, in the beginning, killed him before his cycles could ever really start. Both blessing and curse, though at the time he viewed it as the former. 

Every life all he had to focus upon was living, and his biology listened and did as he pushed himself to do. Dying before any hormones could flood his system, the phases of moon and shifting of time, allowed him so much more than he thought possible. It made things so, so much easier.

Until, very suddenly, he got good at the act of living. And then it all came rushing back, all at once. 

And all those deaths, all that time he has lived without the usual upheaval that came with his set of biology, it all came crashing down at once in one fell swoop; nothing at all like what he's been living with for the past thirty years outside of this hellscape.

If he had anything to compare, his younger self would have likened it to a more alpha like cycle. The heady rush that first morning it had come through, the eons of living before those deaths, it all hit too hard, too fast.

And he couldn't even give it a moment of his time; survival was more important, and his willpower was more than his biologies impulses. 

That did not mean he was perfectly controlled. It was shameful, to know what he's gotten up to with willing pigmen, but no one had to know about that, ever. It was a personal thing, after all.

Still, being visited by the demon King during the full tip of a cycle made things...difficult. Even worse off, scentless as the fellow was.

Tall, thin, shadows curling at his feet, pitch black, shiny shiny eyes, too many snarling grinned fangs, carved talons and much too tall, towering, looming, eyeing him as if he was set on the market just for showing. Flicking that cigar of his, smirking all the way, lazy and elegant and pristinely dapper, delicate even, every movement well thought out, a chess piece in talented hand for the play.

And, during those times, all Wilson could do was hiss, taking in that scentless air with deep sucking breathes as he paced, as jagged energy flooded his muscles, slurred in his brain, pheromones oozing from his pores as he huffed and puffed and curled and uncurled his fists, shaking with an anger that kept mistranslating, misfiring.

At least he never submitted; that was well below what a gentleman like himself could ever stoop so low for.

His beta behaviors were becoming even more incoherent, twisted, corrupted in this place, but he was given a boon for having to slog through it all.

As he got better at surviving, living in this cursed place, the less intense it got for him. Corrupted, yes, as he fended for himself to a degree a more natural, even if primal, set up would never have left him to, but it eased as he toughed it out. He has always been a heavy scent, thick in the air even back then, but now it lasted half the time, the more experienced, skilled he became at living longer. If he stayed alive for long enough, his cycles were almost normal, even. 

Enough to not have him pacing near insistently. His brain, his genius self, had little chance against centuries of genetic diversity, instinctive sense, no matter how much he fought it; even when he won there was always that spiked bitter drawback, the catch at the end of the day.

And it was all the worse, to know that each combination of this useless mix of animal behavioral cycles, each time he was being watched. The King of the board observed, eyes glittering from the shadows, whispered little mocking words and teasing as he flustered and growled and fought himself from reacting to the prods. 

His senses were more instinctively attuned to others of different castes; the higher up they were, the more likely it was symbiotic, and that was the instinctive end goal. Anything less was more likely to be rejected, at least on that primal note; abusive relations happened because humans were not simple animals, could make decisions for themselves and interact on a sentient level, and this separated them from the birds and beasts. As a scientist, he knew this.

Also as a scientist, Wilson knew he had to be very, very careful in the situation he was in. Self isolation was different from a kidnapped isolation; his decision making was scraped, and he was being pushed to survive on baser instincts. Human nature took a backseat to instincts forged through his genetics, and if presented with something even vaguely beneficial to himself his brain, in all its hormone addled glory, would take the offer as the best bet. 

And, while better than anything else perhaps, his sentience identified that nothing would be better than something. Bonding based on rash animal instincts was a fucking stupid idea.

Still, it was mortifying, knowing he was being watched. Even confining himself to tents, or at times pig houses, he could feel that horrid shiny gaze on him, watching him, analyzing him. The bizarre repulsion he got from the stale, scentless air clustered into something incomprehensible, and it was twisting up into something he very much disliked. 

The taste left in him after each cycle, finally, fucking finally leaving him be in all its exhaustive, drained feel, it was a shuddering disgust. 

He fought against the shadows, snarled accusations to those shining eyes, and all he'd get back was a crooked sharp smile and a voice speaking vile words, equal parts praise and mockery. It left something bitter in his chest, growing outwards with thorns, and again, the scientist in him knew.

It wasn't rejection, but it was at the same time. Mixed signals, and he was being played with but his damn traitorous biology was falling right into that trap. It was vile, impolite, and completely frowned upon. 

This sort of thing didn't happen often in social circles, Wilson was fairly sure of it, but it was happening to him and it fed into what he was each and every time.

And, each time, he'd fantasize a little harder on finally strangling the demon haunting him, a little more imagination in eviscerating the fucker, decapitation, hot blood on his hands and biting, tearing, clawing; the utter violent destruction caused all by himself onto the tormentor of his waking world.

Even worse, that it sent eerie thrills up his spine. There were more terrible things that the Constant pushed on him than just death, and it was ever insistent. 

His willpower said he'll fight forever; the rest of him was starting to crumble. False promises seemed more real than reality itself, at least to the nerves and hormones in his brain, the generations of genetic instinct.

Thankfully, he found the machine before it could get far worse than it already was. The prickling feeling of eyes upon him was becoming far too familiar, and even bathing had become a stressful affair; perverted eyes upon him for so long and he felt utterly disgusted with the reality he was in.

But the machine was real, here, with far truer promise; of home, empty, silent home, without eyes or words or slither promises, temptations. 

Wilson, so badly, wanted to go home. He wanted his freedom back.

So he pulled the lever, he stood his ground to the shadows coiling about his feet, and at each world entrance he faced off against an increasingly twisted, foul monstrosity of a man, scentless and abominable and angry, ever so viciously angry. There was no time for biological cycles here; only a race, a buckled chess game.

White goes first, black takes King. Wilson, at the end of the world, the very edge itself, worn down and pushing through pain, exhaustion, and biting hallucinations, found himself at the feet of the scentless demon King, not nearly ready enough for the final blow.

But, reality set in when he finally stumbled to that twisted thorny cage of a Throne; salt spray air, a dark, dead world, dusty and crumbling, and a stale scent so pale in comparison he nearly missed it.

The eyes staring back at him were pitch black, but they were dull, blindly dull, sagging in tightly chained tendrils, old and skeletal and mostly of undeath, and Wilson was bruised and was punctured and broken boned but he had enough, to stare at his tormentor and to understand that there was so, so much worse ahead.

The Throne room was filled with salt, but stank of hopeless desperation, eons of it, descended into something primarily self destructive. There was a twinge in the air, out of place, inherently wrong, and it jittered his nerves and set the feeling of death, decay, eternal suffering, deep to his core, instinctively wanting to back off, put distance between himself and this wrongness, but-

There was nowhere else to go. 

The disturbed corruption in him felt, for an insanely dizzying moment, as if it fit right in.

But, at the end of it all, will power won out. Wilson turned that key, because what he saw before him was a broken, hollow shell of a man without even an ounce of hope left in him.

Unlike the King of Nightmares, Wilson was sure, so very sure, that he still had his humanity, corrupted as it was. And his humanity did not paint him as a vicious tormentor, no matter what violence he indulged in imagining.

He was not like the former demon, and he never would be. The lock turned, the key stuck in place, and the finally freed man shakily, very shakily, stood himself up.

For a moment, that desolate faded feeling lifted ever so slightly, and Maxwell turned dull eyes upon him and gave him a dull, relief filled smile.

And then Wilson froze in shock and horror as shadows withered and screamed in the dark, flesh became ash and dust, and the skeleton crumbled into a fine nothing in only the briefest of moments of time.

And then there were inhuman, scentless hands upon him, dragging him through the desolate dirt, and then there were thorns and chains and the biting, gnawing invasion of Too Much inside his mind.

Humanity was nothing to Them; just another puppet, and They ever so much loved the human game of Chess. They would always have a King, and tied down, the incomprehensible pushing and scraping clean whatever it could reach inside his skull, Wilson stared at nothing and understood that perfectly well.

At least, until the Queen showed up.

Apparently, the game had changed when he hadn't been looking; time flowed differently to Them, and very suddenly Chess was not what they oh so loved any longer.

The flashes of coherent moments he had during that time frame, freed and then torn and then fought against, brief memory of the Throne room, of a woman's pale face, what little it came out to be was the faint traces he'd smell even now, deep in the pitchest black of long night, scrambling for a torch before the Constants new monarch ripped the life out of him.

He'd never get over alpha scent, no matter how faint, and the Queens, even under shrouded shadow and thick blooming roses, had his remembrances leaving him feeling cowed and absolutely weak in the knees. 

What made that funny, however, was that Maxwell himself said he never minded that about her. 

Then again, knowing what he knew now, Wilson frowned and hemmed and hawed and decided to keep his thoughts to himself. Who knew, right?

Reliving the Constant was first nature, even after the brief visit to the Throne. Surviving was what he was now, though he'd always say science was first and foremost. He tried, very hard, to believe that each and every time.

So, when he felt the familiar, if slightly different, feeling of being watched skitter over his back, Wilson found it instead in second nature to immediately snarl a challenge to his first ever truly there, in the flesh, human intruder.

Under all that anger, shocked hatred and unrestrained fury, he never even noticed that he wasn't answered back in kind. But, he at the very least had dropped the axe.

Maxwell instead got a many few knocks to the head, and their fist slash slap fight was a bit rushed and chaotic and a completely confusing rush of an experience.

And then the shadows almost took his fire, his first nature kicked in, and survival had Wilson rushing back to toss logs in and urge the flames back into a healthy crackle of safety. The prickle of presence, goosebumps up his spine and over his arms, had him ignoring his uninvited guest for the rest of the night.

Maxwell, unfortunately, elected to stick around in that silence. 

Once more, humanity rose up in his chest, billowed out everything else, and when he faintly heard the grumble of a stomach that hasn't eaten for centuries upon centuries, his ice box had enough stale kabobs for the both of them.

And, for the first time ever since Wilson has camped in the Constant, his rough little living space was not scentless. It wasn't just him anymore, a very sudden, jarring realization, straight to his sentient brain, eons of isolation struck by real, actual presence, living and solid and right, _right_ there, across from the fire, sharing a meal even.

That second of time had him inhaling softly, near silently hissing in air as he always had, and getting a second, just as strongly slapped realization, straight to the core that was all of himself in one unified, biological and autonomous being.

The man who had tricked him here, loomed as demon and tormentor and kidnapper through centuries of displaced, tortured time, the very same old fucker who had ruined every hope and dream of his, from beginning, middle, and end, this very same man-

-had the distinctly faint scent of omega.

It was well faded, near non existent, but having been alone for so long it was all too fast that Wilson could suddenly pick up on it. Layered was that salt, a foriegn spice, melded as the Constants very air itself, but even so well hidden it was all too distinct to sensitive taste buds. Nothing like what he's been around before, nothing like what his memory served him, a thin taste left on the tongue, and for that moment he sat, frozen, all too close to a very much specialized caste, and individual he very much had a seething frustrated hatred against. 

For that mere moment, side eyeing the former King of Nightmares, he caught the shiny dulled, pitch black gaze of the other man, watching him guardedly, completely masked, paused in eating. 

For a moment, the very air itself held its breath.

And then he looked way, focused on his own dinner, acting completely nonchalant, and from the corner of his eye a second passed before his former enemy did the same.

The kabob was dry, not his best attempt, and as he chewed Wilson's mind whirled, gears and cogs spinning, spinning fast, thought piecing together. 

But, willpower overruling, they spun on far different matters than what had just occurred between himself and another of very, very distinctive odds. There was too much shadow in the air, too much recent memory, too much sudden surprises and shocks to dwell upon something so, so damn frivolous. The Throne experience may have put a dent in figuring the way out, but he would continue pushing forward, no matter what.

Survival first. His willpower, who he was as a person, as a force of his sentience, was first and foremost.

The rest of the illogical parts of himself, unsciencelike, ungentlemanly as it was, was second, less than even. He'd not even spare a thought from his brain matter on the issue. 

He'd most certainly not dwell upon unsightly cycles and repeats, hormone flushes and biological impacts; no, that was all shoved far, far under the rug, ignored completely and utterly in stubborn fashion. 

Wilson would not dwell upon such things, none whatsoever.

The taste still stuck to his tongue, the roof of his mouth, permeating in his camp, intrusion and sudden awareness and minor challenge, a faded dull scent, heady and thick and mixing, fusing to his own with little effort.

Wilson grit his jaw, hissing low and near silent, air between his teeth and scent thick in his senses, and focused on finishing his dinner, for once not eating alone.

He'd not even entertain such thoughts.


End file.
